"Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty gives way"
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Perpetual pushing and assurance is Collier's sanctified version of what we now call brute persistence: the steady, almost stubborn practice of acting as if the obstacle is smaller than it looks until it becomes smaller. The line is clunky by modern standards, but its mechanics are sharp. "Out of countenance" is doing a lot of work: a difficulty is personified as something with a face, a posture, a public persona. Keep pressing, keep sounding certain, and you don't just solve the problem you shame it, unsettle it, force it to drop its performance. The enemy here is not hardship so much as the theater of hardship.
That choice fits Collier's world. As a late-17th-century Anglican clergyman, he writes in a culture obsessed with moral discipline and the management of the self. His famous attacks on the stage weren't only about profanity; they were about how habits, scenes, and attitudes train an audience. This aphorism applies the same logic inward: act with assurance long enough and the mind's "seeming difficulty" loses its authority. It's proto-self-help, but with a theological spine: perseverance isn't merely efficient, it's virtuous.
The subtext is also social. Assurance reads like confidence, but it functions as a public signal of steadiness, the kind prized in a period of political and religious turbulence. Collier isn't offering a motivational poster; he's prescribing a demeanor. Push consistently, refuse to look rattled, and problems that feed on hesitation start to starve.
That choice fits Collier's world. As a late-17th-century Anglican clergyman, he writes in a culture obsessed with moral discipline and the management of the self. His famous attacks on the stage weren't only about profanity; they were about how habits, scenes, and attitudes train an audience. This aphorism applies the same logic inward: act with assurance long enough and the mind's "seeming difficulty" loses its authority. It's proto-self-help, but with a theological spine: perseverance isn't merely efficient, it's virtuous.
The subtext is also social. Assurance reads like confidence, but it functions as a public signal of steadiness, the kind prized in a period of political and religious turbulence. Collier isn't offering a motivational poster; he's prescribing a demeanor. Push consistently, refuse to look rattled, and problems that feed on hesitation start to starve.
Quote Details
| Topic | Overcoming Obstacles |
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